


Ever After, Happily

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [76]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Gen, M/M, Romance, Worldbuilding, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23999575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: One Single Day in the lives of leaders of Torrent of Clan Vode.May the Fourth Be With Us All.
Relationships: CC-3636 | Wolffe/Hardcase, CC-8826 | Neyo/CT-0292 | Vaughn, CT 7567 | Rex/CC-1138 | Bacara/Kit Fisto, CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix
Series: Soft Wars [76]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 224
Kudos: 607





	1. Sunrise

Kit Fisto slips from his Aethersprite onto dewy waves of soft, blue-green grass bordering a cozy landing strip. No more than a few strides away there’s a gorgeous, well-maintained Mantis hull partway through a loving retrofit. In the distance, open warehouse doors reveal rows of gleaming Larties shining under worklights like spoils of war. Or trophies of a hunt.

They do not cringe from their heritage, the Vode. They will not allow their beginnings to confine them, but neither will they allow it to be forgotten.

Concord Dawn’s white dwarf sun peeks over the horizon, chasing two of its moons, and their light is soft. It highlights the surprise twists of brown-gold in the former commander’s hair, draws out the hazel in his eyes, and at some point over the last year it has scattered a sweet spray of freckles high on his nose and cheeks.

Kit grins. Freedom suits him well.

“Bacara of Nova of Vode,” he greets, and thrills at the softening around the eyes that Kit has learned means as much a smile as a quirk of his lips. Kit's glad then, that he’d thought to ask Rex about the proper forms of address now, and that from there the conversation had wandered to how to pronounce Bacara’s name in his language.

“Master Fisto,” he rumbles. “The Vode welcome you.”

“ _Just_ the Vode?” Kit ensures his smile is the cheekiest he has. “How _cold_.” Bacara sighs.

“Couldn’t go five minutes, Fisto?” he grouses without bite.

“Hardly my record,” Kit protests.

The little hanger-on pretending to be a greave giggles. Kit shoots them a wink and they giggle again. Bacara groans something with sharp consonants and whispering vowels.

They speak both dialects of Mando’a at home, Rex has said. It shows. Bacara’s Basic is just so slightly more noticeably accented, but the words flow just a little bit easier. Kit thinks he might quite like the change.

R6 drops from Kit’s Del-7 and trundles up to fall in step with their odd little party, whistling all the time her opinions on leaving the ship out in the open.

“ _No rain,_ ” the child whistles back. “ _Shield stops animals. Ship okay._ ”

“See?” Kit soothes before R6 can work herself up into a rant. “Nothing to fear! And just who is this well-informed youngling?”

“I’m a Roger!” they chirp.

“You’re not a Roger,” Bacara rebuts with the speed and resignation of someone who’s said the same thing several times already doesn’t have much hope that this will be the time the message sticks. He stares down hard at the child.

They are dark-haired and tan-skinned; human, or mostly. Gender indeterminate. When they smile they show off a missing incisor.

“I don’t know which one this is,” he decides. “But it’s probably a Lightning. They take after their chief: _very nosy_.”

“But very adorable,” Kit adds.

“I am,” the child agrees. “Thank you for noticing.” Kit laughs, impossibly charmed. Bacara sighs again, but noticeably doesn’t shake them off. He moves as if he doesn’t even notice their weight.

Inside the airy ‘port, workers direct R6 to charging. A harried clone pries the child from Bacara’s leg and whisks them away to be fed and dressed and eventually educated, regardless of their opinions on the matter.

A flying droid neatly bullies Kit out of his cloak.

He ducks, dodges around a lunge but it has a friend and between the two they manage yank the cloak down his shoulders and out of his arms reach.

Bacara intervenes before the second droid can make the attempt to appropriate his lightsaber too.

“Security?” Kit wonders as the pair gleefully retreat, apparently satisfied at least commandeering the cloak.

“Pests,” Bacara corrects, trying not to sound fond. “You’ll need to go to the ‘alor if you want that back.”

Kit raises an eyebrow. “A very effective way to ensure he’s aware of all visitors,” he says, droll. Bacara glances at him from the corner of smiling eyes.

“An accidental benefit,” he lies.

Kit doesn’t know how much infrastructure was already here or how much had been built in the year since the Vode had declared _no more_. The light rail just outside the small spaceport seems brand new but the waiting pods bear all the hallmarks of the carefully restored. The countryside that flashes below them is an eclectic mishmash of old and new: homesteads of huddled multi-building plots spotted with lights like eyes, cast of durasteel and repaired with wood; towering high-rises catching the edge of sunrise in the distance, some stripped down to skeletal to repair others to good-as-new; sprawling farms with fields fanning out from one side of the farmhouses and combat ranges squatting under low altitude warning markers from the other; sleepy, still-dark mounds and twists of homes built directly into hillsides or crawling up hollows of trees to spread out across massive branches. Vode ingenuity, and nearly two million sets of hands to build.

Each cluster of dwellings they speed past, from tight little communities to far flung solitary structures, has a wide, clear path directly to the nearest light rail node. None of them are ever cut off from their fellows. Kit resists the urge to comment, to mention how Jedi-like their communal living seems, just to see the wrinkle and hear the groan he knows Bacara would make in response. He’ll save it for an ideal time, when Rex can enjoy the reaction too.

Kit smells the salt in the air long before they round a mountain and one of Concord Dawn’s seas stretches out silver and glittering in front of them.

This is a wild world, where the lands and seas have teeth, where prowling things haunt the forests and unknowable dangers stalk the deep. There’s _battle_ in those quiet waters, hunt and survival. Things to eat, things to best, things to test yourself against.

There’s something of instinct, something of genetics, that itch at Kit’s mandibles. Something sleeping in his blood that whispers pleased at the thought of _chase_.

They know him, these Vode young men, in ways he has never allowed most fellow Jedi to ever see. They built their home backed up against his domain, they’ve found him a range where he can hunt.

“Rex’s idea,” Bacara lies. His dark constellation of freckles stand stark against his pleased flush.

This place, Kit thinks. This land and her people. They’re both temptation.

“I’ve done us all a disservice,” he muses as Bacara leads him from the rail node to the edges of a home he can just begin to see, starting on the rocky shore and sweeping back and up inside the cliffs behind it. “Waiting so long to come. Only coming now, when you’re all but moving back to Coruscant in a week.”

Bacara hums, disagrees. “We needed time to understand who we are. And Rex wouldn’t have let you see it before it was finished. And. I’ll still be here, mostly.”

The Vod’alor has rigorous standards for certain of his brothers, more stringent rules for when certain ones of them can leave and for how long. Kit doesn’t understand it, but whenever it’s mentioned in their comm conversations, Bacara always seemed to breathe a little easier.

“A wise choice,” Kit says, and even agrees with it. Without the restrictions of his duties to the council he’d not want to live in Coruscant either, where they’ve strangled nature with steel and duracrete. Where the seas have been drained so long ago there isn’t even memory of them anymore.

Kit discards his shoes and steps off the stone walkway, picking his way through rocks and damp, pointed little stubs of rough scrag and sparse sand. There’s an untamed world under his feet. The Living Force sings here the way it hasn’t for Kit for years and years. He’ll meditate outside tonight, and maybe tomorrow morning too. Let the dew gather under his lekku, link him with the water in the air and sea. Shallow meditations, at first, until he reacquaints himself with falling into the rush of it. He’s been on Coruscant far too long.

Bacara points out a cleared space down the beach, packed earth and rock and the gaping mouth of a hollowed out rock face bristling with cabling and port door framing. It’ll be a hangar when they’ve finished, for Rex’s transport. He’ll be back and forth from Coruscant so often it’s not practical to land all the way at the spaceport each time. They’re considering widening it to a two-unit: one of Rex’s Torrents isn’t that far from them on the rail, and certainly much closer than the ‘port. They’d prefer to park here and make the trek to their place, instead of clearing any more of the trees from their property. They can’t install doors until they’ve decided.

It seems large. Kit wonders, idly, how much more work it would be to have it fit a Delta-7 Aethersprite as well.

The home begins almost gradually. The rocky ground become smoother, flatter, and the stones below Kit’s feet become more regular. Wide, rough wooden railing flank a short three steps up to an open porch, floor wood gridded and stone-filled. Chairs and benches scatter around a massive firepit. A roasting spit crouches over it, gleaming from regular use.

The front doors fold away, over and over on themselves until the entire front face of the house opens up to the sea.

“Torrent Command is out hunting,” Bacara says before Kit can ask about the quiet, stripping off jacket and blasters and unloading onto the racks by the door for each. Kit remembers: Rex had been disappointed he wouldn’t be there to meet him at the ‘port.

“I will be suitably skeptical of their catch,” Kit proclaims, “so our dear Rex doesn’t get too swelled a head.”

Kit has never heard Bacara laugh before. It’s a coarse, quiet thing that exists almost solely in his chest. Kit wants to hear it again and again.

Bacara reaches for his pack, and Kit lets him squirrel it away next to the very familiar, massive, Krill-shaped couch that dominates a wide-open sitting area. The leatheris is well-loved and soft under Kit’s hand.

“If you want,” Bacara offers, and he’s beautifully bad at casual. He leans against the back of the couch, arms folded. “You _could_ go a little further. Make Rex _really_ regret missing most of your first day here.”

Kit is intrigued and excited. Little by little, Rex has been teasing out this playful side of Bacara. Their comm conversations haven’t given Kit much, but they’ve given him enough to enjoy the slow blossoming of it.

“What do you have in mind?”

Bacara’s beard has grown out more, is a little less viciously kept. It also suits him well. He gestures with a jut of his chin behind him, out back the way they came. Towards the deceitfully slumbering ocean still and mirror-like under the floating sun and moons. “There’s something _big_ out there,” he says, leading. “Churning up the surf, scaring off the fish in the shallows. Nets haven’t done well in days.”

Kit feels his second row of teeth extending, the needle-sharp points eager to _tear_. It has been years and years since it was so hard to hold them back.

“Indeed?” he says with equally unconvincing attempt at casual. “Bigger than a marshrunner, would you say?”

Bacara hums, taps at his chin to hide the curling smile. “Perhaps a bit smaller,” he admits, “but much faster. And it _is_ taking _all_ _four_ Torrent leads to take down that marshrunner.”

Kit sees him, sees Bacara backed by the sea and the threat curled inside it and wants. His Basic squeezes out around and through both sets of teeth, words sliding sharp. “Could you use some help with that, then?”

Bacara laughs, and it rumbles like thunder over the horizon. For that laugh, for that smile? Kit is already slipping out of his tunics. Bacara’s amused ‘Oya’ trails him as he goes.


	2. Noontide

“I want to blast the bunnies too,” Roger grouses. “They keep eating my mint.”

Wolffe still isn’t comfortable with droids. Everyone knows it. Plo knows it, and he’s all the way on Coruscant. Wolffe suspects Sinker’s influence there. He and Boost both call Plo every evening. Wolffe snorts at their dependency. He never bothers Plo more than six times a tenday.

Droids. B1s especially. They’ve all had their difficulties adjusting, but Wolffe still remembers being only two inches of transparisteel away from death, watching B1s cutting through to flush him out into space.

Three weeks after Wolffe started coming around to the farm regularly, Roger potted a Climbing Rose in his chest cavity and teased the vines out to grow around his torso. If he’s pretty, he’d argued when Wolffe had next visited, maybe Wolffe would be less scared. Wolffe had feigned great offense at the insinuation.

He gets on a lot better with this Roger now. Better than any of the others. Roger’s on to something. Roger’s also decent enough to not tell anyone else why he’s an ambulant shrubbery.

“They’re not hunting the bunnies,” Wolffe says, again, with quite a bit less patience than the first few times but quite a bit more than Boost would have put money on, once upon a time. “They’re hunting a marshrunner. It’s eight times your size. It will _crush your chassis_. And then The Shouty Shit will cry.”

Or try to rebuild him with high-powered lasers, anyway. Roger backs up in the farm’s server every evening. Wolffe already knows how this will go: he’ll end up venturing down into Concordia’s underground apartments to try to dig up one of Torrent’s crazy engineers to un-kark-up whatever Hardcase has done to his housemate’s wiring that makes him only walk backwards and speak Toydarian.

Or worse. They’ll have to go find Rex’s kid. Ask him for help. No thanks.

“Roger, roger,” Roger says sadly and shuffles down the porch to poke mournfully at the tiers of cans where he’s trying to start a berry hydroponics system.

Wolffe’s still not used to how the air smells here, that it smells at all. Being dirt-side always meant battle and burnt ozone from laser discharge, or Coruscant and the stench of traffic.

There’s a man-high stretch of something yellow-leaved, flowering purple and deeply perfumed that reaches out on either side of the farmhouse, marking off where the farm ends and the training field starts. There’s a little plot of nose-itching peppers hugging the back porch, rows of herbs smelling many different types of interesting under and around the kitchen window. There’s a spray of pale, soft fungi growing in circles in the cool shade under the porch. They’re surrounded by mosses that inch out as far as they can stand into the sunlight.

Roger calls what spreads out into the back yard carpet grass. He’s vicious, defending it from any other interloping plants. Wolffe can see where the name comes from: the stuff is sinfully soft under his feet.

The sun’s warmed the planks that make up the back porch. It’s incredible under Wolffe’s back.

“I thought you didn’t _like_ being bored,” Roger says. There’s the sound of shears, and the air fills with something thick and woodsy, like the aftertaste of a good alcohol.

“Whatever that is,” Wolffe says. “That one’s a yes.”

B1s were by default programmed to be able do things like hum contemplatively, or yell when they miss a step and fall off the porch. It had always surprised Wolffe; why would you take the time to develop so much _personality_ in something, only to throw them away by the thousands on battlefields?

No, the irony doesn’t escape him.

Roger hums. He has olfactory sensors, but they’re good for saying what the chemical composition of the scent-producer is. Not as useful for telling whether things smell good or not.

“What kind of a yes?”

“A soap or a drink. Not food.” Roger hums again, snips a few more samples.

Sunlight dyes the inside of Wolffe’s eyelids skin-filtered-red. A couple of neighbor-Roger’s fat bees come exploring, investigating whatever Roger has flowering on the trellis climbing up the side of the house. Something optimistic starts to chirp at the bottom of the garden where Roger has dug trenches and wants desperately to get a fish pond going.

Fish on Concord Dawn are uniformly massive. ‘Twenty to thirty pounds’ massive, for the plant eaters. Carnivorous ones are well beyond that. Roger’s going to have to talk Shouty into importing something to fit his aesthetic from a core world.

And hope the bunnies don’t murder them. Wolffe doesn’t have much hope of that.

“I’m not bored,” he finally answers. “Not yet.”

Plo, and Boost and Cody and even karking _Rex_ have been on Wolffe’s case. Telling him it’s okay to take breaks, to have days off, multiple in a row if he needs them. They tell him to slow down.

Heh. Smell the flowers.

There’s much to do, but there always is and always will be. Everyone in Wolffe’s life keeps reminding him that they don’t all have to be done now. That it’s okay to take some time for himself.

“Is that a lie?”

“ _Absol-karking-lutely_.”

“Ha,” says Roger. “Ha. Ha. I win.”

Wolffe can’t help his grin. “How long did Shouty say I’d last.”

“Tenth hour.” Oh Wolffe is going to let the pack-

“Sinker said breakfast.”

Never mind. Wolffe’s going to have to grind all of their faces into the dirt himself.

The warmth under his back has sunk lassitude into his bones, but has done nothing to stop his wandering thoughts, the tap of fingers against wood, his heels grinding subtly into the sweet, sweet grass. This side of the farm is gorgeous and peaceful and Wolffe has been so _karking bored_ for hours.

Shouty Shit had said last night that Wolffe might want to head back to his sparse little apartment, considering no one else would be at the farm all the next day. Wolffe had been just stubborn enough to stay anyway, for spite.

“We could go blast the bunnies,” Roger says with a mechanical hopefulness.

‘ _You probably don’t want to let_ _Roger_ _try to_ _blast jumpscares_ ,’ Hardcase had said before he’d disappeared that morning. ‘ _Something’s weird with his precision_ _range_ _targeting_ _still_ _. You’ll spend a lot of time ducking_.’

This is too good a day for that, Wolffe thinks, so that’s out.

But that’s only one option. And the Shouty Shit built himself a thousand acres of multi-terrain combat zone out back of his house. Wolffe might not be Torrent, but he adapts all the same.

A pair of spherical droids toodle past, fluttering a cloak like a flag behind them. Wolffe watches them consideringly through slit eyes until they vanish behind the hedge.

“What’s the status of those ion jetpacks?”

Roger makes an exceptionally rude noise. “You mean the very secret ion jetpacks that you know nothing about?”

“Those.”

“The ones Hardcase plans to use to seduce you into dating him?”

Slowly Wolffe frowns. Very slowly he pushes himself up to sitting.

Rogers don’t have facial expressions. Roger still looks very, very droll.

“You can’t be serious,” Wolffe growls.

“I think we should all be grateful that he realizes he likes you now,” Roger sighs. “Realizing you’re mostly moved in might be beyond him. Have you considered writing him a note?”

Wolffe had collared the karking shithead, shoved him up against his karking former Captain’s living room wall and made out until he forgot his own damn name. He’d spent the rest of the karking night slumped in Wolffe’s lap grinning like a karking moron. Wolffe had tolerated _so much shit_ from every single one of his brothers and most of the Pack after that.

If _that_ didn’t get the point across, Wolffe doesn’t have much faith in a note.

“You _cannot_ be serious.”

“Does that mean you’re interested in moving past ‘best friends’?”

Is it Hardcase, Wolffe wonders, or is it Torrent in general that is completely karked in the head?

Roger shuffles over to pat his shoulder in sympathy.

“So the ion jetpacks work great. Do you want to use them in the massive combat area he built so you would spend more time at his house?”

Wolffe stares at Roger. “You are not in any way serious right now.” Roger stares back. Yes. Yes he is.

Wolffe rolls his eyes so hard his head hurts.

“You know what’s really great for working off frustration?”

“We’re not gonna blast the bunnies.”

How Roger pouts without facial features is one of the enduring mysteries of the universe.

“Get the jetpacks,” Wolffe orders and shoves himself to his feet. “We’re gonna see just how agile those karking flying ball droids are.”

Roger cheers, the little asshole. Wolffe grins. This whole time, Roger was bored too. Wolffe can’t even be annoyed at the ham-handed manipulation. “How much did you win, making me break first?”

“Hardcase has to bring me back the pretty fish,” Roger admits without shame.

“Name the ugliest one ‘Sinker’,” Wolffe demands and goes to find something that will fit over Roger’s chest plant.


	3. Dusk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Re-uploaded with significant changes to the second half!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check out [@fatima-ackerson's](https://fatima-ackerson.tumblr.com/) wonderful [Art of Vaughn and Neyo](https://fatima-ackerson.tumblr.com/post/617207918385823744/vaughn-and-neyo-i-have-an-urge-can-i) on Tumblr!

For a moment, Dogma thinks it’s Kix sitting in the kitchen watching the four of them hover up to wriggle in through the window. It’s the same face, obviously, but more than that. More than the buzz cut, the same slight brush of stubble, more even than the lightning bolt-like patterns shaved into the side of his head. It’s the way he sits, perched on the high kitchen stool with one elbow braced on the gleaming durasteel table, a blank white steaming mug in his other hand. It’s the way he looks like at any moment he’ll press to his feet and advance and there wouldn’t be anywhere to run.

It’s the way he looks like the kind of man who’s never more than three steps away from a DC-7 and never more than a half a heartbeat away from willing to use it. It’s the way he looks like shooting you wouldn’t even budge the pleasant, slightly curious look on his face.

Dogma’s never met this vod before. He knows exactly who it is.

“Evening, Captain Keeli,” Dogma says.

“Evening, vod,” Kix’s twin replies with an enviably smooth lick of buried sarcasm. “You boys having fun?” It’s nice, Dogma thinks wistfully, that Kix managed to live long enough to find his family again. He wishes Vaughn had climbed in first. He has a much better innocent face.

They’re a dozen floors up the outside of a foreboding high-rise, covered in black plating that swallowed light for power but left it looking like an ominous smudge on the landscape. People had been calling it Terror Tower even _before_ Kix and what ended up being his terrifying collection of firearms had moved in. It might be Torrent Tower now, unofficially, given how many of them had followed suit.

They’d gotten used to being no more than a repulsorlift ride away from everyone. More distance than a few floors was proving to be difficult for some to handle.

Dogma had tried. He’d got himself a whole house, right on the edges of Concordia where the wall had crumbled away out into the encroaching forest. Before they leave for Coruscant, he’ll be handing it off to a vod who’d just brought his partner to Concord Dawn, will move all his stuff into an efficiency on floor two. No point in having a big house if he’s only going to be on-planet less than half the time. And maybe, also, Dogma’s one of those brothers having problems with the distance.

Below Dogma, the others have figured out something’s wrong. Vaughn is already starting back down, his Commander in his arms and the hiss of his jetpack propulsion receding. Anakin’s still level with Dogma’s knee, has got a grip on Dogma’s boot; he’ll cover them from blaster bolts if he has to.

This is Torrent Tower. Anyone who passes on the regular is used to things and people plummeting from upper floors and stopping themselves just before hitting the ground. Repulsorlifts are only the most efficient for people who don’t have jetpacks.

“Just dropping by,” Dogma says and prays he won’t be shot. “Picking some things up.”

Captain Keeli snorts and it speaks an entire paragraph about what he thinks about _that_. “One of Jesse’s,” he decides. “Kix says every one of you have more balls than sense.”

There’s backhanded compliments, and there’s Kix’s backhanded compliments. They’re uniquely pithy.

“That’s us.” If he was going to be shot, he very, very likely would be already. Or alternatively, if Kix’s twin was going to shoot Dogma, he’d have no problem leaning out the window to do so even if Dogma _did_ decide to make a run for it.

Dogma hauls himself the rest of the way in through the round kitchen porthole, signs a ‘ _caution_ ’ back to the rest and they carefully follow. “This should be fast. Be out of your uh. Scalp. Quick.”

Anakin groans. Dogma very subtly punches him in the neck as he scrabbles in.

The floor is carpeted where very, very few are. Kix wanted nothing to do with cold durasteel floors ever again. Stone wasn’t practical this high up, and Jesse didn’t like the way wood floors tended to creak over time. Harder to sneak on them, probably.

But carpeting generally hadn’t survived the years of abandonment on Concord Dawn. Few fabrics had. Jesse had run dry his backlog of favors, going reclaim site-to-reclaim site to barter whatever he could for however much they could salvage.

They ended up cutting the scraps into small squares and mixed the pieces up so the resulting patchwork would look intentional.

It took all of Domino and Crest, more conflicting holonet instructions than Dogma wanted to remember, and eight days to get the whole apartment done. Jesse still owes them favors for that. But the carpet softens the rooms’ boxy sweeping design into something more livable than brutally functional. It suits them well.

“Gonna assume you’re here _just_ to get into _Jesse’s_ stuff, right vod?” asks the Captain in that Captain Voice. The one that says he has an answer, and it’s in your best interest to come up with that same answer, and fast.

“Of course,” Dogma says absolutely truthfully. Dogma and Anakin are most certainly here to try to break into Jesse’s records, and nothing else.

Vaughn and his Commander slip through the window and scuttle by.

Dogma doesn’t have Vaughn’s ‘trust everything I say’ smile but he _does_ manage a ‘harried professional having to accommodate superior officer’s eccentricities’ with delightful, well-rehearsed accuracy.

Kix never falls for it. Captain Keeli’s face doesn’t look like he’s all that convinced either. But maybe there’s enough of Jesse’s influence curling up because the Captain also looks like he doesn’t want to deal with whatever this ends up being.

Dogma projects Innocent Gofer as much as possible.

“If you leave any evidence I have to explain, it will not go well for you.”

“Understood Captain,” Anakin chirps and _his_ innocent face is parsecs better. Figures he’d leave Dogma to it until the last second though. His grin says it was entirely planned.

The kitchen wall is the only one in Jesse and Kix’s apartment that faces outside. That was also entirely on purpose. A lot still aren’t used to open sky meaning anything but oncoming battle, and in Jesse’s home you never have to see that. The kitchen window would have been sealed over, Dogma thinks, if not for Kix’s experiments in frying regularly setting off smoke alarms.

They’d picked an apartment with a south-facing kitchen. They never have to deal with direct sunlight, and the window curtains are blackout. It’s as close to shipboard living as Jesse could make for Kix, deep in the center of Concordia.

Jesse’s office is one rack of shelves in the corner of the sitting area. Deliberately so; he’s somehow gotten even more allergic to authority now that ranks no longer apply. He feels a desk makes him official, or something. They won’t find anything useful there.

Dogma spent eight days installing carpet in this apartment. He knows exactly where in the sitting room under the holovision stand there’s a four-square-foot section of carpet panels that are attached together but aren’t glued down. He’s not even slightly surprised to find Jesse’s secret floor safe under it, precisely where he’d thought it would _have_ to be.

“We have three hours til we need to be at Rex’s,” Anakin murmurs. “Get in, get whatever it is Blockade needs and scram the logs. I’ve got the mousedroids.”

“Oya,” Dogma agrees and gets to work.

* * *

Neyo and Bacara have been talking a lot recently, more in the last year than their entire lives before it. Neyo can’t wait to call him and tell him Vaughn’s latest idea of a date was a perfectly chaste evening in someone else’s refresher.

Vaughn’s Star Corps, technically. Formally. During the war he was Torrent adjacent for long enough to get infected by whatever’s wrong with them though. After, he’s Torrent enough that Bacara’s Sidearm let him use the name.

(Neyo’s wondered. If this _thing_ with them. If it goes farther, gets official. Would Vaughn swap to Valor? Or would he add Valor to the chain he’s already got? Or would Neyo end up adding Star Torrent to his name instead?

Neyo tried to ask Bacara that, once. Bacara tossed him overboard into the sea and would have left him to swim back if he hadn’t sworn not to ask again. The asshole. Who was he supposed to ask? WAC-47? It’s not like he can ask _Vaughn_.

Bacara doesn’t understand. His Sidearm? Still has some self-restraint. Neyo’s?

If Neyo asks Vaughn who would take whose name after a _purely hypothetical_ marriage, Vaughn will have all the paperwork drawn up by the end of the next business day. By the end of the tenday they will have a forest homestead, two point seven five little warriors and an indoor-outdoor tooka. Bacara doesn’t understand what Neyo means when he says Vaughn is… enthusiastic.

Neyo wonders if WAC-47 would get along with a tooka.)

Regardless though, Vaughn earned the name Torrent because after six months running with them that’s what he is. And to a Torrent, something like scaling twelve storeys to break into a clanmate’s fresher is probably considered romantic.

It’s legendary among the Vode that Torrent’s Twins and their lady broke into the former Chancellor’s Naboo estate on one of _their_ dates. No one ever said whether or not they were aiming for the fresher. There might be precedence.

“Sorry this isn’t more exciting,” Vaughn says. “We all agreed we’d have a better chance of survival if we tried to minimize collateral damage.”

Neyo is standing in the middle of a Torrent command staff’s fresher while his … person of significance presses something that looks like a someone surgically implanted a pulse probe into a hand-scanner to different points around the combination sonic/water shower.

“I was promised thrills,” Neyo drawls. “I expected at least a speeder chase.” He makes another mental note to try again to get Bacara to explain what, precisely, is wrong with Torrent’s brains.

Maybe they had the air percentages wrong in their Venator.

“They have to be dumping the coolant _somewhere_ ,” Vaughn continues, more than used to carrying on a conversation regardless of Neyo's pointed insights. “And there’s too much of a risk of contaminants to do it in the kitchen. The outflow _has_ to end here.”

“Sure. I’ll just be here waiting for someone to start shooting.”

Vaughn grins over his shoulder at him, sunny and bright, as if that wasn’t just empty sarcasm that means very little other than punctuating a response.

Neyo wishes he’d said something better. Maybe. Maybe compliment his ingenuity? Even if Neyo still isn’t sure what’s going on. Vaughn _is_ really clever. Neyo should tell him that more, he thinks.

The fresher is clean in detail, scrubbed down to what Neyo would have no problem believing was surgical standard. It’s a mind-boggling blend of military and deliberately not. The sonic has a soft little mat outside it in gray and there’s a rack of his and his towels to match. The fresher mirror is topped by clear, bright little bulbs on a dimmer switch and the handsoap is scented with something that reminds Neyo of wide open fields.

There’s a little cup holding two toothbrushes and a ceramic shiv. There’s a DC-15A carbine mounted over the toilet and a DC-7 behind it. There’s a string of flash grenades in with the spare towels.

The toilet paper is triple ply. Such _decadence_.

Vaughn gives a cry of success about a half second before his scanner beeps. He’s found something in the wall near the showerpan and he’s marked out the left and right limits of it.

“It’s draining now!” he chirps excitedly and starts tracing whatever line he’s found. He backtracks out of the fresher and takes off down the hall, scanner held against the wall and beeping to mark his way. Neyo jogs to keep up.

It doesn’t take them far; just around the corner to a hall closet that shares a back wall with the fresher. Lines up with the sonic, it looks like from the layout.

Vaughn is glowing.

“Help me,” he demands and throws himself into ripping out the cleaning supplies. Neyo helps, mechanically.

Once they get the back wall clear it becomes apparent that it’s a shill. “Just a little light encouragement,” Vaughn mutters, backs up and slams his boot into a corner with a resounding crash. The back panel comes away in one whole piece.

Behind, there’s. “…A freezer?”

Vaughn hums. “Kix _always_ confiscates the fun stuff,” he gripes but he’s grinning too hard to make it work. “And we already had the Twins go through the Captain’s place so we knew he didn’t keep it there.”

“And this stuff needs to be chilled?”

“Ion jet boots,” Vaughn says easily, as if the thought of Torrent having _ion jet boots_ isn’t uniquely horrifying. For other people.

Neyo is suddenly completely on board with this plan.

“The tech heads need the rest of this plasma back to finish, plus they’d had a prototype already done before the command raided them. They’d had _ion_ _jetpacks_ too! But we’re gonna have to hit Hardcase for those.”

They’re breaking in to a spy and doctor’s apartment to steal volatile plasma and a pair of prototype ion jet boots from former combat company commanders. This might be Neyo’s best date ever, particularly if it ends with ion jet boots.

Neyo’s sure he’s seen this exact plot on one of the crappy free holovision channels sometime around last Lifeday.

Vaughn laughs gaily, and swings Neyo in for a kiss. The timing is fortunate; he cuts Neyo off before he manages to accidentally ask him to marry him. “Be right back,” Vaughn sings. “Kix used a cypher lock and Dogma made us leave all the thermal charges downstairs.”

Explosive dates. _Ion jet boots._ Neyo wonders whether Vaughn has a preference of species for their two point seven five little warriors.


	4. Day-Long

Jesse slithers down the rockface to Rex’s right and lands with a thump that _really_ should not be nearly as quiet as it is.

It’ll be entirely silent, once Kix is sure those new ion jet boots won’t blow someone’s leg off. Rex won’t ever admit it, but he might be even more excited for those than Hardcase is.

Jesse tucks his macro-binocs inside his jacket and _prowls_ , a rolling, distance-eating stroll that could drag even the most reluctant eyes to him. Hardcase gestures something incredibly rude. Rex rolls his eyes. Kix snorts, and is dragged into a deep, filthy kiss.

It had been Jesse’s idea, Rex knows, for the two of them to move into the city. He likes having his finger on the pulse of things, likes being able to take a few steps out of his door and be where everything is happening, likes having reliable access to the holonet right in his apartment. Kix had been a hard sell, but Jesse had pulled every thread he could until he’d made someplace they could both thrive.

But sometimes Rex wonders. Sometimes, when he pries Jesse out of his spider’s nest of contacts and favors, takes him out and gives him a target, Rex wonders.

Every vod knows Torrent’s something different. Something a little less normal, under their same-as-everyone-else appearance. Something a little more willing to give in to the call to hunt.

Rex had put Jesse’s DC-15S blaster carbine back in his hands, bullied him into loading 100-round mags and dragged him out of the city before the sun rose. Jesse’s boots had pounded the leaf-littered forest floor in that first chase as the dawn broke. He’d _glowed_ in the light.

“We’re going to need to do this more often,” Kix says consideringly. His eyes are dark and blown wide, his lips are bitten red. He’s grown his hair out, hides his tattoo now. He’s planning to get it removed when they get to Coruscant. On Concord Dawn, and doubly so in Concordia, there are all kinds of droids in the community. Kix is a softer heart than he’d want anyone to believe.

Anakin’s trying to get him to grow his hair out completely. There’s some waves coming in, in the little length that’s already there. Kix is determined he’s going to shave it back down after the removal. Anakin is exactly as stubborn as Kix; it could go either way.

Jesse tugs a little at the hair he can now at least get finger-holds on and grins. Not a smirk, one of those I-have-a-secrets that he’s fond of. A genuine smile. Maybe one a little wild.

“We are,” Rex agrees, “if we want to keep Jesse from looking Rattataki.” Jesse turns that grin on him.

“Sorry Captain,” he says, completely ignoring the agreement they’ve had that they’d stop calling each other by rank. From Jesse, it feels like a slightly annoying nickname, rather than a deference. “No matter how much you sweet talk, I can’t make out with you in front of the husband until I ask him. I hear that’s bad luck on a hunt.”

“Especially when you’re a forward scout and said husband is on the back line with a DC-15LE sniper rifle.” Jesse laughs, and Kix lets him steal another kiss before he bounds over to their makeshift command post.

“You were right Rex, it headed right for that ravine. Landslide diverted it but figured out a way to double back. Moving pretty casual now. Thinks it lost us.”

He picks out points on their projected maps: markers that have gone off; ones they’ll need to swing by and reset in case they lose it again; the trace of the path the marshrunner took.

“If nothing else the Lawquanes won’t lose any more eeopie today,” Hardcase says.

Hardcase is a little rounder in the face, a little stockier in the trunk. No less a solid wall of muscle, more even. He spends a lot of his free time out on his range, testing whatever Torrent engineers come up with and doing instruction recordings for military gear. Word is he might get a contract with some Corellian company, field testing their arms and armoring like he does for their unit.

Hardcase is tanned dark and it makes his smile brighter. He’s all muscle, but now he has some meat on him to shape. He’s finally found out he _likes_ food, and his roommate likes gardening and cooking and doesn’t have a digestive system.

Somehow, over the past year, Hardcase grew nearly a full inch taller. It had made Kix go quiet and furious. Whoever supplied the nutrient supplements to the GAR had found their mail servers flooded with vitriol, Kix’s sharp tongue tearing several strips out of them. Rex had gone straight to Cody and implications had rippled through the Vode, changed how the different units’ medics considered nutrition, especially for the youngest of them.

They’ve all been careful to keep the full weight of that from Hardcase. He’s still their shiny heavy gunner, sometimes.

“So even if we _don’t_ take it down and have to go tell the others we’re complete failures in every way and an insult to our names, we at least managed _that_ much,” Hardcase jokes.

Rex hums.

They’ve driven it out of the marshes, sure, and every one of these things they’ve seen so far hunted by separating its prey from the herd and dragging it down into the muck until it drowned. But Rex named them marsh _runners_ for a reason: they’re strangely long-legged and fast, and can go for miles. Something like that wouldn’t _only_ hunt by stealth and using their environment.

“It’s the wrong shape for a lurker-type,” Kix comments, riding Rex’s same wavelength as usual. “Your typical muck-dwellers have longer jaws, shorter legs. And these have bite-tear teeth, not bite-clamp. These things by any measure _shouldn’t_ act like they do. Always thought it didn’t make sense.”

“So the question is,” Jesse muses, “does it lurk because it _can_ and eeopie are fat and lazy? Or does it _have to_.”

“It just ran a klik in just under a minute,” Rex points out. “That doesn’t seem like something that _has_ to lurk at all.”

They’ve left their speeders at Lawquane’s farm. They don’t have any scanning droids or force fields to pen the thing in. That’s not the point. The point isn’t to kill the thing: they could do that with decent precision calibration from a shuttle.

The point is to _hunt_.

“Head down here,” Rex orders, and points out a path that cuts forward and west of the target. “That’ll cut it off if it tries to head down to the river and backtrack that way. Hardcase, take the ravine. If there’s a way through there, set up on it. If not, head up here, to the cliffs and find yourself a nest. Kix, with me. We’ll split off at the treeline if it’s clear, a klik south if the slide flooded the causeway. Get eyes on it and hold. I’ll cover the trail south by southeast.” He scans around the circle, smirking at the sharp focus he’s commanded.

“Keep it in the trees,” Hardcase orders. “If it breaks treeline and works up a dead sprint east, we’ve lost it.”

“Roger roger,” Jesse murmurs. Hardcase gestures imploringly to Rex, and Rex obligingly smacks the scout up the head.

“It broke our line once,” Rex reminds, and though the chase had been an hour of pure exhilaration, they know it’s not practical. They’re not going to run this thing down unless they rig a relay. And they’re not going to get close enough for a shot at the one unarmored vulnerable spot under its neck unless they run it down.

No one’s managed to take one down on foot before. Torrent’s determined to be first.

“If we don’t bring this down today Bacara will mock us subtly enough that I can’t call him on it. And I don’t know your twin that well, but if he’s anything like you…”

Jesse and Kix exchange a look. “Yeah,” Kix admits. “He’ll hire a brass band to follow us for at least a tenday singing how we karked this up.”

“Wolffe,” Hardcase says mournfully. Rex pats his back with no sympathy. Hardcase is overdue for a karking clue.

“Call set when you’re in position. Kix, you get three sets, get it moving. All hands, when it’s in your area, _keep_ it moving. Make sure it heads towards the next set up. Anyone gets a clear shot for Force’s sake _take it_.” Rex levels them a mock stern look. “I’ve left my boyfriend and my husband unsupervised in my house. We’re _not_ going to be out here all karking day.”

He gets the cheerful jeers he intended.

“Oya, Torrent!”

“ _Oya!”_


	5. Evermore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying hover boxes! PC readers, mouse over for translations. Mobile readers, translation hyperlinked to and from the end notes as usual
> 
> If you were wondering what Wolffe is knitting, [@sailorsol](https://sailorsol.tumblr.com/) was kind enough to [show us](https://sailorsol.tumblr.com/post/617493568814219264/thefoundationproject-sheapunk89-rogueladyvader)

“Major Widget,” Rex says sternly.

As happens every time he does that, someone starts choking on laughter. They’re out of his sight line this time, and if he turns to look he knows the little droid will make a run for it.

“Oh let them have it,” Kit laughs. “They’re so happy.”

“We’re not setting precedence.”

Kit’s robe flickers dark and tan and gold in the light of their firepit, trailing Widget to make their figure something otherworldly. They do a little wiggle every now and then, to make it flutter. Gizmo has balled up chirping in under Kit’s arm. Cute, except Rex is quite sure they’re waiting for the opportunity to make off with Kit’s ‘saber.

Rex can’t see Cody, but a few minutes back there had been a yell, the dark shadow of a _ vod _1 airborne and rounds of jeering. He’s fairly comfortable assuming another ‘who can beat the _ Vod’alor _2’ competition has sprung up on the beach and Cody is properly introducing some brothers to equal parts humility and velocity. He’ll be no help.

Besides, Cody was the one who kept promoting Gizmo and Widget for meritorious service. There is no doubt in Rex’s mind that Cody very deliberately didn’t _stop_ promoting them until exactly one rank higher than Rex.

Anakin outranked them, can still wrangle them with any sort of effectiveness. But it’s Anakin’s fault they’re doing this at all. Apparently they’d been _so sad_ that Obi-Wan wasn’t close by to lose things, he widened their parameters so they could entertain themselves.

Anakin is sprawled across the arm of Torrent’s new ‘Dumbass of The Week’ chair, a polished driftwood affair with its ignoble designation carved into back. Vaughn’s earned the seat of dishonor this time, nominated and enforced by Kix after a whispered huddle with Keeli. Vaughn's thrilled, and he’s caught a tokenly-protesting Neyo across his lap.

It would have been Dogma, Rex has heard, but Vaughn was the first to bring out detonators. At some point after that, Jesse’s horrifically enthusiastic fire suppression system came into play. Rex will get the details later, when Kix can’t glare if he can’t manage to avoid a laugh.

Anakin looks up at Rex’s directed thought, peels himself off and bounds over to them. “What- oh hey! Great work Major!”

“An’ka,” Bacara chides, and earns Rex’s next half-hearted glare. He could _pretend_ he wasn’t encouraging this. Bacara’s eyes glitter back.

“Hypocrite, _ tat'ka _3,” he murmurs and taps the edge of Rex’s own smile.

“Nope!” Anakin sings cheerfully. With the alacrity he’s developed since Rex and Bacara moved in together, he wrestles Kit’s cloak from their little hostage taker, pitches it at their faces and bounds off to protect the more delicate of his sensibilities.

His five year anniversary isn’t all that far. He has two naturally-produced children of his own. His sensibilities are strangely persistent.

“It’s normal,” Kit soothes. He brushes cool fingers against Rex’s brow as if to soothe Rex’s thoughts. It’s been so long since they were in one place, Rex had forgotten how much Kit could pick up when in skin to skin contact with him. Rex rubs the back of his head slowly against Kit’s stomach. Who knows where Kit’s tunics have gotten to, this time. “A child will have a different category for ‘parent’ and ‘others’. ‘Parents’ are universally chaste beings, and they will vehemently reject any suggestion to the contrary.”

Bacara’s laugh is a warm rumble beside him, and it rocks Rex with the force of it.

The night is warm in every meaning of the word. Concord Dawn’s winters are brutal but its summers tend towards mild in their latitude. Silver stars paint the night sky in counterpoint to the orange-gold dots of bonfires that wind down the beach. Brothers and partners laugh and sing and joke. Someone enterprising has started a game that requires a ball, with Ahsoka, Echo and at least two others standing on shoulders. The knot of them spend more time debating what ‘counts’ than actually playing. They seem to be having just as much fun, regardless.

Torrent has never known how to keep a celebration to a few, and their happiness spilled out to their friends. There are far more than were invited, but that’s typical. And they’d brought families, which satisfies Rex in ways he can’t find words for. Torrent only managed to wrestle a spare dozen of the littlest Kamino _ vod'ikase _4 from Lightning’s mercenary adoption tactics when they’d first Come Home, but there’s easily thrice that rolling in piles every here and there.

It’s probably a good thing then, that this evening when Torrent’s command dragged home nearly five hundred pounds of dressed meat, Bacara and Kit had smugly produced about the same of fish.

Smoked. Because the had caught Bacara’s monster early enough in the day that they could slow smoke it. They’re almost Squad _ Shebs _5-level of petty. Rex is proud.

“You were supposed to be annoyed.” Bacara presses a sliver of smoked fished, salted, wrapped around a strip of a sweet vegetable with a crisp-tasting spread to his lips. Rex takes the opportunity to introduce his teeth, make Bacara’s eyes go dark.

“I’ll show you both how annoyed I am later,” he promises. Kit’s arms slide down to frame his shoulders.

“I karking hate you all.”

Wolffe’s knitting needles clack clack violently around a disgustingly magenta yarn only Ponds would love.

“Every karking one of you,” he snarls. He glares poison at them across the flames. Hardcase spoons up behind him in a miserable huddle, chin over his shoulder. He’s always been brave, their Hardcase. Rex would have moved somewhere he could protect his eyes.

“Even -”

“ _Especially you_ ,” Wolffe snaps. His needles clack with undisguised threat. “I can’t believe I ended up the only karking one of my batch with any Force-damned sense and I still end up dating a void-brained-”

Hardcase _lights up_ their circle.

“We’re dating?”

Wolffe’s needles freeze. His face falls into the still calm right before a kill.

“Hardcase can you go check the broths aren’t running dry,” Rex interrupts quickly. “Just add enough water to keep the bones covered.”

“I’m going to butcher him,” Wolffe says conversationally as the heavy gunner lopes off to the stone rocket stove and the pair of pots rendering down the last usable portions of their hunts on top.

“He can hold you up indefinitely,” Rex drawls. “One-handed if there’s a wall.”

Wolffe considers it for a moment. “The shit I put up with,” he decides. The clack of his needles becomes less immediately fatal.

There’s a snicker from the shadowed lip of the roof overlooking the porch and beach. Rex can see just the edges of where Kix has Jesse pressed into the corner of the couch in the sitting room, and is using him as a cushion. Dogma prefers to be more mobile when in observation, loitering on the edges to pick up any good gossip. The lurker must be Hevy, then.

“ _All good_?” Rex battlesigns. A bottle cap pings off his forehead in answer. Good. He’s had something to drink up there, and hopefully that means something to eat too. Rex will check before he leaves. If he misses him, he can catch Cutup, send a container back with him.

Kit laughs and presses a kiss to the top of his head. “About to go for your planning ‘pad?” he teases. Wolffe snorts, and would have said something cutting if Hardcase hadn’t chosen then to return and re-institute himself into Wolffe’s space.

“Hi,” he says dopily. “Boyfriend.”

Rex and Wolffe meet eyes, and Rex toasts his brother with the last of his beer. Go ahead, _ ori'vod _6; comment on _Rex’s_ life choices.

Wolffe looks away, pretends he never intended anything of the sort.

Rex wins.

Someone Rex can’t make out goes around rounding up the littles and herding them inside. It would be too much of a hassle at this hour, trying to figure out which belongs where. Rex has blankets and pillows enough; they’ll pile them on the sitting room floor and guardians can come pick theirs up in the morning.

He finishes the last of his bottle. “Better move this down the beach,” he says, “so we don’t keep the littles up.” Force knows whoever drew the put-to-bed lot has their work cut out for them enough.

Their huddle collects themselves. Ahsoka yells Bacara over to try his luck at the ball game with fluctuating rules, and Rex loses Kit to a circle listening intently to a storyteller. He doesn’t know where Wolffe and Hardcase disappeared and he rather doesn’t think he wants to.

His empty bottle is slipped from his fingers and replaced. Kix presses shoulders against his. “Captain.”

Rex smiles, presses back. Remembers his last act of pure, wondrous spite as Torrent’s commander, in the final moments in Republic space as Republic army officers. The paperwork was properly filed less than a full minute before their desertion. Jesse would have needed at least five to pull it back. Too bad comms had gone down right then.

“Captain,” he returns because Torrent deserted with four, not counting the one they borrow. Kix laughs, loud and free.

They drink, content, and watch.

Brothers flit between fires trailing lights like comets. Voices meld in a droning cacophony of joy. Vode live, claim their own space and not just spaces left in between.

In the distance, a rowdy Ghost in a 212th Airborne Ops flight jacket raises a toast. “ _No one_ defeats the Vod’alor!” he bellows to the raucous agreement of his fellows. “All you ground-pounding worms _must bow_!”

A chorus of jeers and cheers paint the night air.

Rex hums. “Kix.”

Kix is already cackling, tears beginning to bead in the corner of his eyes. “Ye-yes Captain?”

Rex takes a last sip, and hands Kix the rest of his drink. “Hold this.”

The chant starts with Kix. But as Rex stalks forward ‘ _Torrent Oya! 7_’ beats from mouths in nearly every corner.

Cody meets him in the circle they’ve cleared, matches wild grin for grin. “Look boys, we have a half-a-snack stepping up!”

Oh Rex is going to _enjoy_ this. “Hey _ 'alor _8?” His follow up is pure physical.

They crash in the center, and one brother goes flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Brother Back  
> 2\. (Author-Derived) Clan chief of the Vode. Back  
> 3\. (Journeyman Protector Dialect) Little Brother. Back  
> 4\. Little Brothers. Back  
> 5\. Asshole. Back  
> 6\. Big Brother. Back  
> 7\. General cheer, Lit. Let's Hunt! Back  
> 8\. Chief. In context, a shortening of Vod'alor. Back  
> And this is where the ~~sidewalk~~ plot ends! Thank you for taking this wonderful journey with me! Never fear, we'll keep seeing side stories and subplots and the like! But this here is the closure the main line of Rex Adopting a Jedi (and also mostly everyone else) needs, I think. I love you all! May the Fourth ~~technically the sixth but hey who's counting~~ be with us always!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cody's Coda](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24039820) by [SailorSol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol)
  * [Cold, Hard House of Gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24492970) by [LovesFrogs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovesFrogs/pseuds/LovesFrogs)




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